Manufacturers of integrated circuits (“IC”) and thin film coatings (“TFC”) are reliant upon accurately controlled plasma processes. Current plasma processes use an extensive variety of high power radio frequency (“RF”) generators. The majority of the RF generators operate in the high frequency (“HF”) spectrum between about 0.3 megahertz (“MHz”) to about 30 MHz. RF power levels typically range from about 10 watts (“W”) to about 10 kilowatts (“kW”), or more, depending upon material processing requirements. Water cooling is normally used for RF generators which provide power output levels above 1 kW.
IC and TFC companies generally process materials twenty-four hours a day without any planned maintenance for the RF generators, they simply wait until an RF generator fails. When an RF generator fails during material processing, the cost can be significant due to material processing down time and damaged thin film coatings on products.
Because the majority of IC and TFC companies use RF generators that are more than ten years old, and due to the high cost of re-tooling, they will continue to do so until an RF generator can no longer be relied upon and is finally scrapped due to end of life failure rate escalation. There would be a substantial advantage in having an apparatus and method to test, in situ, the performance of an RF generator and preferably without having to remove the RF generator from material processing during performance testing. The apparatus and method of testing the performance of an RF generator would provide a significant improvement in material processing reliability along with a substantial cost savings.